should do their physical work for them, like farm
animals, except even a little grosser in the case of
Margaret, who did not miss the chance to sneak a
couple of secret munches on one of the pencils from
the judges’ table.
I don’t want to say she’s still eating a lot of
pencils, but when she farts, I swear you can almost
see a little puff of sawdust.
Wednesday 25
Dear Dumb Diary,
Jump - rope - a - Thon day!!!!!!!!!!
School was normal. That’s how it started,
anyway. And then, like everything that starts
normal, it became abnormal.
Right after school, just before we went to the
gym, Isabella came out of the bathroom and walked
right into a wall. When she turned toward me, I saw
that she was not wearing her glasses anymore. And
when she got closer, I could see that her eyes had
turned green. Green like a jelly bean.
“Isabella! What happened to your eyes?”
I said.
“I got contacts,” she said. “Just put ’em in.
Cool, huh?”
“Where did you get the money for contacts?”
I said, knowing that her parents would not have
approved, and that Isabella has a very hard time
saving money.
“The Juvenile Optometry Federation,” she
said. “Plus I had a few bucks saved up.” And she
laughed that kind of laugh that psychopaths laugh
when they have you cornered in the basement.
I felt sick. Isabella had faked the charity.
And I had helped her. “Isabella! Our inner beauty!
What have you done?”
“Look,” she said, “ they’re IN my eyes, right?
And they’re beautiful. Bang:Inner Beauty. I
didn’t have enough for the tinted ones, so I colored
them myself. I think I may have used a little too
much green marker on them, and I might have
wrecked the left one. If you get some, you should
take them out of your eyes before you color them.”
They were practically stolen, kind of. But
there was nothing I could do, and Isabella knew it.
I had helped her, so if I ratted her out, I’d be in just
as much trouble as she would be. We had faked out
the principal, which is like faking out the president.
All I could do was lead her to the gym. She was
almost blind.
Lots of kids showed up to participate in the
Jump-Rope-A-Thon. I didn’t see Angeline right
away, which is odd, because she is so into these
things. Mr. Dover and a few other teachers were the
judges, but a couple of them were late, so Mr. Dover
asked if Isabella and I could help by counting other
kids’ jumps first, and then do our jumping last.
Since we’re totally jumping experts, we said okay.
As the participants did their jumps, we’d
record the number and drop the sheets off with the
judges. Isabella had to count by the sound of the
jumps, of course, because her vision was all blurry
from her contacts.
Margaret and TUkWNIF were really good
jumpers: No doubt that Time - alone - To-
Practice thing helped, and jump -rope handles
are big, juicy, delicious knobs of wood, and we all
know how that appeals to Margaret. (Never caught
her but I’m sure she got in a little gnaw - time.)
After a while, we got down to the last few
jumpers, and Angeline slid into the gym. She had
this look on her face I had never seen before.
She called me over, and she was sort of
panicked. I wished that Isabella could have seen it,
but her eyes had started to roll independently like a
chameleon’s. (Marker poisoning?)
When Angeline had me alone, she—Are you
ready for this? — CONFESSED. She was almost
crying when she told me that she can’t jump rope
by herself. Hardly at all. See, it’s like I said before.
Jumping rope is a skill you practice when you spend
lots of time alone. Angeline, being totally popular
Ha - ha! I just knew that if I lived long
enough, I’d discover the BAD SIDE of intense
popularity. You never get any “me time.” It’s always
“we time.” You’re followed everywhere. Maybe even
into the bathroom. Even your weetime is we time.
Yup, it was a tragic moment for Angeline. A
wonderfully tragic moment. It was so sad I almost
burst out laughing.
But the moment didn’t last. She showed
me her pledge sheet. Angeline had more than a
HUNDRED sponsors. She may be bad at jumping
rope, but she is great at collecting for charities.
Every time that rope went around, Angeline would
make, like, 10 bucks or something for the school.
It was so wonderful! All that money
and she was going to blow it because she couldn’t
work a stupid jump rope. So much for your inner
beauty, Ang. Wait till everybody finds out how you
let the whole school down!
The school . . .
NOOO! The School!!! Why did I
even have to think about the school?!
If I let Angeline fail, it would be a huge blow
to her —her popularity, her inner beauty, her smug
barrette skills, and her evil power over Hudson.
But it would also be a huge blow to the
school. Nobody else had anywhere near as many
sponsors. I had seen the sheets.
And as I looked into Angeline’s eyes, I saw
that she was sad. Like real sad. Not sad like when a
beagle can’t scratch the barrette off his ears, but
sad like when you know you’re letting everybody
down. And she made my inner beauty squirt out
of me until I was standing in a puddle of my own
loveliness. I had created a monster— a beast. And
it was me. I was a real Beauty of a Beast and a
Beast of a Beauty.
I went over and asked Dover if the jumpers
had to hold the jump rope themselves, or if they
could just jump it. Because if they had to hold it,
that wouldn’t be fair to people with no hands, like
pirates. Dover looked in the rules and said that the
person only had to jump— somebody else could
twirl the rope.
I told Isabella that I wanted her to help me
twirl the rope for Angeline. Angeline had way more
pledges than we had, and this was the only right
thing to do for the sake of the charity.
Isabella said, “Forget it,” and she wanted
to storm off, but her vision being what it was, she
could only wander off aimlessly.
So I got up real close into her face, and I
made my voice as low and as dangerous as hers,
and I said to her, “Isabella, either you do this or
I’ll tell your parents and everybody how you got the
money for your contact lenses. You’ll be grounded
until you graduate from college.”
I could hardly believe I had said it. Isabella’s
eyes started to tear up a little, but it wasn’t because
I had hurt her feelings. And it wasn’t because her
contacts were bugging her. It was because she was
moved.
See, Isabella is a master of blackmail. It’s
one of the horrible abilities her brothers’ cruelty has
forced her to develop. After all these years, Isabella
could see that I had finally learned something
wicked from her. She was touched by my Inner
ugly, which to her is exactly like Inner
Beauty— so much that it moved her to tears.
“Okay,” she said.
Angeline DOES know how to jump rope if
somebody else twirls it. And actually, she can jump
pretty well. Not like Isabella, and not at all like
me, but she jumped for a long time, and we raised
a bunch of money for the school. This was probably
going to be her biggest jackpot yet, and her inner
beauty and fame were going to skyrocket off the
charts.
I was furious and delighted at the same time.
Dear Dumb Diary,
My arms were killing me when I woke up this
morning. You use different muscles when you twirl
a rope for somebody else, and I felt like I had a
huge charley horse in my shoulders. Can you get a
charley horse in your shoulders?
Anyway, this was worse. More like a
charley moose
Isabella wanted to do our solution for Dover
in gym class today. I told her that my arms were
killing me, and I tried to talk her out of it, but she
was sure she wanted to go for it, and you know how
she gets.
We waited until toward the end of the class
so we could review our solution and make sure
it would go as planned. We could hear the buses
starting to pull up, so we had to move quickly.
Dover watched as we loaded the baby into
the snake slingshot. Isabella started to pull it back,
but her contact lenses were bugging her eyes and
she was having a hard time aiming. I could tell she
was off target, but my arms hurt so bad, I couldn’t
compensate for it, and when she let the baby go, it
wasn’t exactly heading in the right direction.
Pinsetti probably could have caught it, but
a month of head injuries had him spooked, and he
ducked, so our baby, with the big metal pot on its
head, smashed right through the window.
Then it rolled down the little hill outside the
gym and off the curb, and under the wheel of one
of the buses as it was pulling up. We looked out just
in time to see the bus roll over it and leave a big,
dirty, baby pancake on the asphalt.
I don’t think Dover even knew what to say.
The baby would have had a better chance for
survival with the crocodiles. All Dover did was shake
his head slowly and walk away. I guess we were
failing.
I could hardly bear to look at Hudson. And
I knew that Angeline was going to be laughing her
head off. Not only had we not saved the baby,
it looked as though maybe the baby had done
something to make us really, really angry. But
Angeline wasn’t laughing. She was motioning me
over to her.
She leaned in close and whispered to me:
“Sacrifice.” I don’t think I would have known
what she meant before. But now, since I have lots of
inner beauty, I suddenly understood.
“Mr. Dover?” I said. “There’s more.” I quickly
gathered everybody’s dolls and handed them to
Isabella, Pinsetti, and TUkWNIF. Then I walked into
the center of the gym.
I announced, “While the crocodiles are busy
eating me, the rest of my team will quickly sneak
everybody’s babies safely across the gym floor.”
Mr. Dover looked astonished. “Jamie, you’re
going to let the crocodiles eat you? Doesn’t that
mean you fail?” he asked.
“I already failed,” I said. “But now everybody
else passes. And ahead of schedule. So they get
next week off, right?”
Dover smiled. He even clapped a couple of
times. He said to the whole class, “She’s right. The
only solution to this problem was for one member to
give up everything for the rest of the team. During
Trust Falls and Sled Dogs, one person counted on
the group. In this exercise, the group counts on one
person. You got it, Jamie! A- plus.”
After class, Hudson and I talked and
laughed on our way to the lockers. Angeline passed
us and said hello. I said hi back, but Hudson never
even saw her. I guess her inner beauty is no match
for mine.
I really don’t know why I didn’t start having
any inner beauty before this. It’s really way easier
than monkeying around with a barrette.
Friday 27
Dear Dumb Diary,
Never do anything, ever. That’s my
new motto.
This morning I was feeling pretty good about
my new inner beauty. And Isabella was feeling
pretty good about her new contacts. She was telling
Margaret all about them, but I could tell that she
thought she was talking to me. I think I’d better
take Isabella back to the eye doctor and get those
contacts fixed.
Angeline was at her locker today, and right
above it was a sign the school had put up that said,
CONGRATULATIONS, ANGELINE! YOU
RAISED 600 DOLLARS FOR THE JUMP -
ROPE - A - THON. A NEW STATE RECORD!
But Angeline wasn’t all glowing like she usually is
when she accomplishes more fame for herself. In
fact, she seemed a little sad.
What is this? Why do I have to feel this way??
Is this the ugly Side - effect of Beauty?
Having to think about how other people feel?
Anyway, Hudson came up to me and started talking,
and I could see Angeline’s huge, horrible, beautiful,
bright Windex-blue eyes glimmering like a blue-eyed
blond puppy whose head is clamped in a tightening
vise. (Why do I think of these things?)
Hudson was there, practically wading up to
his waist in my gushing inner beauty.
But then something beautiful inside crawled
up my throat and out my mouth and said this:
“You know, Hudson, it was Angeline who
helped me solve that baby- and- the- crocodile
puzzle yesterday. I would never have thought of
making that sacrifice without her.”
And then Hudson smiled at Angeline. Who
could blame him? The ol’ inner beauty plus outer
beauty was a pretty delicious parfait.
I looked up at Angeline’s Jump-Rope-A- Thon
sign and then locked eyes with Angeline. I tried to
broadcast “Fair is fair” with my eyes, and I guess
she got the message, because she said to Hudson:
“Well, as long as we’re being totally honest,
Jamie here helped me with the Jump-Rope-A-Thon.
Without her, I probably could never have raised a
single dollar.”
Then Hudson t
urned to me again. I should
be required to have a lifeguard posted on my
head, because now he was drowning in my inner
beauty. I mean, seriously, I was looking pretty
incredible. C’mon, even Angeline knew she was
no match for me now. And I didn’t even have the
barrette in.
Do you want to know how I KNOW she knew
it? Because the next thing she did was pull out a
copy of today’s paper.
“Jamie’s picture is in the paper,” she told
Hudson. And she was right. The picture was from
the Walk-A-Thon. Not the first one, when Angeline
walked past our garage sale. But the second
one, when she saw me and Mrs. Clawson’s old-
lady underpants. Remember how I told you that
Angeline’s charity junk always winds up in the
papers?
Here’s how the picture looked, with
Angeline’s jillion-dollar smile and me with a tongful
of hag panties:
The caption was something like: “Well-known
charity participant pauses during Walk-A-Thon to
watch girl play with elder’s underpants.”
Hudson read it and then looked at me as
though I had been eating the underpants. I
tried to say something. But words kind of fail you
at a moment like that. I mean, it was me in the
picture, and even though I wasn’t playing, what I
was doing wasn’t much better. My inner beauty
was rapidly being replaced with inner
weirdness.
Angeline and Hudson walked away laughing
and talking. Angeline looked back over her
shoulder, and it seemed as if she was sending me